Jeff Bezos Admits the Web Is Higher Than the Washi...

Amazon founder, Washington Publish proprietor, and lizard devourer Jeff Bezos advised the Publish’s workers Wednesday morning that the web was a greater opinion part than their newspaper. Then he laid out his agenda for the long run: He needs his op-ed writers to fuel up the “free market” and “private liberties,” two issues very a lot beneath assault by the Trump White Home.

Bezos despatched his directive to Publish workers this morning. Then he posted the text of that e mail on X so everybody may see it.

I shared this word with the Washington Publish workforce this morning:

I’m writing to let you realize a couple of change coming to our opinion pages.

We’re going to be writing on daily basis in assist and protection of two pillars: private liberties and free markets. We’ll cowl different subjects too…

— Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) February 26, 2025

“We’re going to be writing on daily basis in assist and protection of two pillars: private liberties and free markets,” Bezos mentioned. “We’ll cowl different subjects too in fact, however viewpoints opposing these pillars shall be left to be printed by others.”

Then Bezos spoke an excellent reality. “There was a time when a newspaper, particularly one which was a neighborhood monopoly, may need seen it as a service to convey to the reader’s doorstep each morning a broad-based opinion part that sought to cowl all views. Right this moment, the web does that job.”

Bezos has let the opinion part of the Washington Publish kill the complete newspaper. It was, at one time and even beneath his tenure, a reasonably good supply of stories. Now it’s a shadow of its former self. It has shed reporters—a few of whom have been laid off, some who give up—and lost hundreds of thousands of subscribers.

Forward of the 2024 election, Bezos stepped in to stop the paper from publishing an endorsement of then-presidential candidate Kamala Harris. The tech billionaire purchased the paper in 2013 and had been fairly palms off till not too long ago. The truth of a second Trump presidency modified that. He’s taken much more management and used the op-ed web page as a mouthpiece for his views. After killing the endorsement, he printed a protection couched as a “laborious reality” that People don’t trust the news.

A few of what Bezos has mentioned is true. Extraordinarily on-line weirdos (like myself) pay approach an excessive amount of consideration to what’s taking place within the opinion sections of main newspapers and legacy shops. The New York Instances and the Wall Road Journal ship unimaginable protection of worldwide occasions each second of the day. Their opinion pages suck.

If I need to learn attention-grabbing or dynamic or difficult editorials concerning the problems with the day, I’m going to learn somebody’s publication. Blood in the Machine will inform me extra about what’s happening with AI than what David Brooks is saying within the New York Instances. Foreign Exchanges paints an image of worldwide battle that surpasses regardless of the hell Thomas Friedman is yammering about.

It’s not that folks don’t belief the information media. Persons are hungry for data and authentic reporting. New shops and newsletters that provide well-reported information and commentary are exploding in reputation. WIRED has seen an enormous increase in subscribers due to its glorious protection of DOGE and the Trump administration.

Individuals don’t belief previous media that’s purchased and paid for by billionaires. They don’t belief cable information. They don’t belief the Washington Publish as a result of it’s owned by Bezos. It’s nearly refreshing for him to be express about his targets for the paper. There shall be no pretense of balanced protection within the op-ed part. He owns the factor, and he needs to see what he calls an American message in its pages.

“An enormous a part of America’s success has been freedom within the financial realm and in every single place else. Freedom is moral—it minimizes coercion—and sensible—it drives creativity, invention, and prosperity,” he mentioned.

Bezos is correct. Private liberties and free markets are beneath assault in the US of America. They’re rules that want defending proper now.

The President that Bezos stood subsequent to in the course of the inauguration has launched an unprecedented assault on each private liberties and free markets. Simply this morning, Trump demanded that Apple—a non-public firm—eliminate its DEI insurance policies after investors voted to keep them. Trump’s tariffs, in fact, are the other of a free market method to the economic system.

This administration has additionally undertaken an rising assault on the private liberties of ladies, homosexual, and trans folks. Trump needs to push transgender folks out of the military, has eliminated the authorized distinctions that permit them to have authorities paperwork that displays their id, and overseen the best regression of ladies’s rights prior to now 100 years.

I’m certain all of this can come up within the editorial pages of the Washington Publish, a spot Bezos guarantees will quickly be a bastion of thought on these necessary subjects. I received’t be studying it although. There’s higher and extra considerate protection of these subjects in every single place on the web.